


'Cause if You're Still Breathing You're the lucky One

by HubcapsAndAshtrays



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Introspection, One Shot, Other characters are briefly mentioned - Freeform, kind of explains how she ended up in that park at the start of 5x11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7162616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HubcapsAndAshtrays/pseuds/HubcapsAndAshtrays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaw mentally working through Root's death in her own way Set between 5x10 and 11</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Cause if You're Still Breathing You're the lucky One

 

She doesn’t feel a thing, her heart doesn’t beat faster, her eyes don’t become damp, her breathing doesn’t even hitch.

Not even a little bit,

She doesn’t feel a thing, but she does know some hard truths, she knows that this was inevitable, that they weren’t all going to make it out alive and unscathed because this was war, and death was war’s inseparable soul mate. She’d known it during their abrasive kiss at the stock exchange and again almost a year later as all five of them stood under the foreboding shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.

But she had forgotten.

There were short almost blissful moments where she’d briefly forgotten. She’d forgotten in the warmth of intertwined fingers, in the solid feel of Roots torso. She’d forgotten in the late hours spent confiding in the other woman, in the tender almost shy kiss they had shared once they finally returned to the subway, in the way she could almost pretend like nothing had happened because on the surface everything looked the same.

For the first time in her life Sameen Shaw had been lulled into a false sense of security.

And now reality had suddenly chosen to turn around and sucker-punch her in the gut.

She doesn’t feel a thing, but she wishes she was back in that dark hole with Greer about to wake up from another simulation. It was funny because as much as Root had tried to reassure her, this was the only time she was _completely_ and _unmistakably_ sure that she wasn’t in another simulation.

_Because there could never be a single simulation in which she would allow anyone to hurt her._

She doesn’t feel a thing but she remembers, she remembers Root telling her that with The Machine they were all immortal and now she wants to punch the stupid AI for putting such a though into her head because Root was dead, she hadn’t been immortal.

Sometimes she wonders why Harold’s all seeing Machine couldn’t have warned Root about the sniper, a small resentful part of her suspects it did. Root was suborn enough to get herself killed if she thought it would help the Machine and stop Samaritan. She can almost see the condescending self-assured look on her face as she sprouts some nonsense about ‘domino effects’ and how her ‘transcendence of this reality’ had finally enabled Harold to be able to do what needed to be done.

She’d probably even reason that she had been born for it.

She doesn’t feel a thing but the thought of a world without inappropriately timed flirting, overly cryptic missions and duel wield shoot outs just doesn’t seem very attractive.

She doesn’t feel a thing but sometimes she wonders that maybe if she had been the one to go to the hospital instead of Fusco _maybe_ she could have done something to save her.

Shaw doesn’t feel a thing but she’d been able to identify the way in which Root looked at her, she’d seen the emotion shimmering in her eyes, and _maybe just maybe_ Shaw had felt a _flicker_ of something in herself.

A flicker that had felt more like a _flare_.

A flare that had seared more like a _firework_.

Its midnight and she’s sat in the dark in an empty children’s playground, spinning around and around on an old carousel. She’s been here for hours and the night chill is starting to seep through her clothes but she doesn’t move, instead she spins faster and faster until it all starts to blur.

She stays there until daylight,

She still doesn’t feel a thing.

* * *


End file.
